Microsoft to make it easier for businesses to manage their stuff on OneDrive

Microsoft is making a handful of changes to the way business users can interact with their files on the web over the coming weeks. The company will be implementing a number of small improvements to OneDrive making it even easier to create, share and locate files stored online. Prepare thy mouse for some right-clicking.

The OneDrive team talks about implementing the right-click menu for business users, which bundles a number of functions into a handy menu that's easy and convenient to access. Smart search is also being added to enable said users to commence typing their search term for OneDrive to display files and folders that match provided criteria.

Next up are changes to the way recent files are displayed online. Instead of a list of files (which may be preferable to many), Microsoft will be switching this view out in favor of a card-based interface. It's also easier to not only see and manage shared files, but to invite people to individual folders as they're created, rather than spending time going back to add colleagues at a later date.

Yeah, true. In my case, though, it is okay. I had 50 Mbit/s in upload speed the last time I checked.

I think for documents it is fine to have 2 Mbit/s in upload speed, as long as you have only a couple of hundred files. If we are talking about thousands of small documents to synchronise for the first time (!), it would be preferrable to have at least 10 Mbit/s upload speed if you do not want to wait forever for it to finish. But at the same time, if you aren't in a hurry you can just let it upload in the background while you do other things on another device, such as a tablet, phone or another laptop/desktop computer. You can also choose to use the same computer that is syncing to do something else while it is working, but I have found from experience with, at least Windows 7 Professional, that it may slow down your hard drive to the extent where you rather feel like it's a good idea to sit in front of another device instead. But, I guess it depends on how powerful the computer is. This trial I did with W7 Pro was on an older laptop with just 2 GB RAM, a mechanic slow hard drive, an older built-in Intel chip, Intel Core2Duo CPU. It was not my own computer but rather an office computer I installed Onedrive for Business on.

This is an issue for all online storage companies. They can not provide you a dedicated 10mbps upload circuit to their servers and everyone else. The amount of bandwidth that would take would be astronomical. I have 50/50 dedicated fiber and it is slow to upload just about anywhere and you never get 50 up or down because of other users and most importantly the service you are connecting to is going to throttle you anyways. I tried to upload about a terabyte to one-drive biz when testing it out, it took long enough that I stopped keeping track. So the idea that you have "unlimited" storage is a myth as well as you can only upload so much data on the bandwidth that they give you. I would rather see an option to pay for additional speed vs additional storage.

Have they fixed the multiple file sub folder issue and naming issue of files? Along with multiple user support for finding and using the file? We would like to use OneDrive but can't until this is addressed.

I love one drive for personal use. I did the trial of the business use to see if it would be good for the office and was very dissapointed. Hopefully they make a lot of improvements, but it was very lacking compared to the personal version which was surprising.

Is the largest file that can go on the one drive still 250mb ? I wanted to move some system backups to the cloud every month (I have like 250gb on one drive.) but, at 250mb it's worthless...

Edit: Bingged it, It now supports 10gb files via the desktop apps(not via the web think that is still 2gb). this is something I can use, my backup software can span backups in different sizes. so this will work out for me. Nice, free cloud backup :)

I really really want to use this for my business, but the inability for me to create a folder to share for the whole organization, that then syncs to each users desktop or phone app has really held it back for me. I ended up finding a work around by finding out how to map a sharepoint drive as a network drive on each users computer, but it's very finicky and easily loses connection. It does also tend to be slow in syncing, although it's much better than it used to be, with far less errors.

It has never worked well for me because I have a lot of folders on the SharePoint site, and folders won't sync using that tool. Files sync fine, just not the folders. Mapping the drive works because all the folders show up, and I can even create folders without issue right in Windows explorer. I searched for hours to find out why folders weren't syncing using the tool but unless something has changed in the last couple of months, I think I have to wait until OneDrive works this way.

the biggest problems with one drive for business are 1) the inability to choose which folders you. want to sync and 2) the fact that you can't remove/hide files that have been shared with you. true result is that your OneDrive ends up cluttered with files that someone shared months ago and are no longer needed.

What I hate about OneDrive is it download and upload the whole file not just the changed bit, like when you edit one line in that DOCX files and then it uploads that whole 30mb worth of file, unlike dropbox. Tl;dr it sucks.

That sounds less resource intensive and more feasible than having OneDrive keep an open catalog of all changes you make in all files you have open in all the different programs one can have files in and then upload all of those changes. Seriously? Is that even possible?

I get along with onedrive real good. Use it on my both home & office PC (windows 8.1) and on my windows phone. It makes easy to work on my project and assignments. Sometime after preparing an assignment I proofread on my phone before going to sleep.

OneDrive is good and to make it the best Microsoft is providing their apps to other OS too. but tjw windows phone app is really bad. it crashes everytime uploading multiple pics and the app is also slow to function many times. the swiping of images is so slow and buggy. everything Microsoft is good on ios,android, windows pc but on wp is always a compromise. and i say this again and again if Microsoft really wants to win the android and ios users lumia is the only best option. ppl can use Microsoft products on other platforms but rhey also have option to jump quickly to other apps ditching Microsoft. its only Windows phone that can help Microsoft win more.

Yeah...tried the business version and came away quite disappointed...its just too slow and less intuitive compared to the personal version...i was taken aback by the differences to be honest...couldn't really recommend it to anyone for daily use...

Does it still have that ridiculous 20,000 file limitation?! I see people moaning about that all the time (apparently something to do with Sharepoint...which isn't a problem for consumer OneDrive users)